Anyone live close to a Solar Farm?

Rocker

A good friend, who is also an excellent drummer BTW, told me that there is a plan to 'develope' a major Solar Farm very close to his house.  Amazingly, but unsurprisingly, the developers have not held any information seminars or even discussed it with the locals in the area.  So I am asking any of you who live close to a Solar Farm to contact me (privately if you prefer) with your observations.  Issues such as noise, how it affects wildlife etc.  In short anything that you think is important for people, who will be living beside these Farms, to be aware of.

Thanks.

mgaw

there is a small ish solar farm about 1 mile from me......once up and running very little disturbance not sure about the wildlife but cant see it being a huge impact judging by the one here as there is plenty of birdlife etc 

dano

You can always run some long leads from the solar farm to his practice room for free band rehearsals. 

Grumpyrocker

Loads here in West Dorset. No problems at all. They usually have the panels standing off the ground so the land can be used for grazing. 

I don't see why they would be a problem? They are just soaking up sunshine, and that's what every arable crop does. 

revsorg

Solar farms negatively impact the profits currently enjoyed by the incumbent generators of electricity relying on fossil fuels so if you're looking for any negative talking points relating to solar farms they should be your first port of call.

VimFuego

I've heard they cause fluoride in the water.

crunchman

Waste of agricultural land.  Our priority should be using roofs on buildings in cities.

I know that sheep tend to graze around them, but it's not the best use of the land.  You are basically restricted to having sheep grazing.  You can't plant crops there, and all the ones I've seen have been on nice flat land where you could grow crops.

Jalapeno

I smell NIMBY !

Octafish

I wonder how close is 'very close'? It's always amazing how concerned people suddenly become about negative effects on the wildlife when there is the threat of something being built near their house....

fretmeister

Jalapeno said:

I smell NIMBY !

As per usual!

Falls into the obvious aging trap. Again.

Stage 1: Anything that exists when we are born is normal.

Stage 2: Anything developed when we are between 10 and 50 is exciting and new

Stage 3: Anything invented after we turn 50 is against nature and humanity and needs to be stopped before we fall into a black hole.

Grangousier

One would assume that if a piece of land is being used as a solar farm rather than an arable farm, then it's of more value to the owner like that. If the situation changes and we need more arable land, they seem to be light enough structures that if they were removed the land could be productive farm land again fairly quickly. This isn't as true of most developments, especially anything industrial. 

fields5069

fretmeister said:

Jalapeno said:

I smell NIMBY !

As per usual!

Falls into the obvious aging trap. Again.

Stage 1: Anything that exists when we are born is normal.

Stage 2: Anything developed when we are between 10 and 50 is exciting and new

Stage 3: Anything invented after we turn 50 is against nature and humanity and needs to be stopped before we fall into a black hole

Off-topic, but it reminds me of that series about planning permissions, where a couple were vehemently against the construction of an ultra-modern house in their village on the grounds that it would be an eyesore. They were conducting the interview from the garden of their 70s monstrosity of a house. Self-awareness was not something they had in abundance.

SteveRobinson

Those solar farms stealing all the sunlight! What are we going to do when they've used all the Sun up?

fretmeister

Rocker said:

A good friend, who is also an excellent drummer BTW, told me that there is a plan to 'develope' a major Solar Farm very close to his house.  Amazingly, but unsurprisingly, the developers have not held any information seminars or even discussed it with the locals in the area.  So I am asking any of you who live close to a Solar Farm to contact me (privately if you prefer) with your observations.  Issues such as noise, how it affects wildlife etc.  In short anything that you think is important for people, who will be living beside these Farms, to be aware of.

Thanks.

1: Less damage to lungs than a coal plant
2: Less damage to wildlife than a coal plant
3: Less chance of a nuclear escape than a nuclear plant. Zero in fact.
4: Fewer profits if you own shares in coal or nuclear power
5: Far more chance of protests from those who believe conspiracy theories.
6: Lower maintenance needs to other forms of power generation meaning smaller need for trucks / parts / other pollutants.
7: With maintenance will keep generating power for as long as the sun lasts.
8: More likely to generate complaints from those who think they, contrary to all peer review testing, can personally detect radiation / unusual static / goblins in the air.
9: Solar could genuinely power the entire planet without the need for any other power supply. At the moment the issue is not the generation, it is the storage and transport of that power. A large farm in the Sahara could generate enough for the world - if the desert was covered completely in the panels. But at the moment there is no way to efficiently transport that power all across the globe.
10: With luck a brave government not beholden to Power industry campaigning will at some point force all building companies to install panels on the roof of all new build properties, sufficient to power that property completely at the very minimum.

TheBigDipper

There's one about 500m from the edge of my village. It's surrounded by farmland, not housing. Unless you look through the gate, the high hedges around the field means you wouldn't see it. I've not noticed any noise when cycling past. 

p90fool

I'm building a solar farm next to a drummer's house, does anyone have any experience of excess noise or weird smells etc?

crunchman

Grangousier said:

One would assume that if a piece of land is being used as a solar farm rather than an arable farm, then it's of more value to the owner like that. If the situation changes and we need more arable land, they seem to be light enough structures that if they were removed the land could be productive farm land again fairly quickly. This isn't as true of most developments, especially anything industrial. 

When we are not self sufficient in food, we shouldn't be using good land for sheep farming that is very inefficient in its use of land.  It means that we are having to import a lot of food, and all those food miles are bad for the environment.  We should be sourcing food locally, and using other sites for solar generation - and there are plenty of available sites.

There are literally millions of buildings where we could/should be putting solar panels on the roof.  There are about 17 million houses in the UK, plus industrial buildings, schools, hospitals etc.  That is a better solution than building solar farms on good farmland.  If the farmer wants to be using solar to generate some extra income, I'm sure he has some barns with nice big roofs.

digitalscream

fretmeister said:

9: Solar could genuinely power the entire planet without the need for any other power supply. At the moment the issue is not the generation, it is the storage and transport of that power. A large farm in the Sahara could generate enough for the world - if the desert was covered completely in the panels. But at the moment there is no way to efficiently transport that power all across the globe.

This one's often brought up - on the surface it's a good idea, but as I recall the major problem with a Saharan solar farm isn't actually the transportation/transmission of that power, but rather that the surface conditions it would create within the farm (mainly concentrated heat not absorbed by the panels) would make it impossible for humans to survive even with protection, and even machines capable of the fine movements required for farm maintenance would struggle. The tech to do so doesn't exist at this point (within an effective budget), so that's the main impediment. Not to mention that the raw materials and energy required for manufacturing on that scale would likely make it ineffective both from a financial and from an environmental perspective.

It's not impossible, it's just impossible now.

VimFuego

p90fool said:

I'm building a solar farm next to a drummer's house, does anyone have any experience of excess noise or weird smells etc?

solar panels are inanimate objects, they won't care 

Mind you, so are drummers.

fretmeister

digitalscream said:

fretmeister said:

9: Solar could genuinely power the entire planet without the need for any other power supply. At the moment the issue is not the generation, it is the storage and transport of that power. A large farm in the Sahara could generate enough for the world - if the desert was covered completely in the panels. But at the moment there is no way to efficiently transport that power all across the globe.

This one's often brought up - on the surface it's a good idea, but as I recall the major problem with a Saharan solar farm isn't actually the transportation/transmission of that power, but rather that the surface conditions it would create within the farm (mainly concentrated heat not absorbed by the panels) would make it impossible for humans to survive even with protection, and even machines capable of the fine movements required for farm maintenance would struggle. The tech to do so doesn't exist at this point (within an effective budget), so that's the main impediment. Not to mention that the raw materials and energy required for manufacturing on that scale would likely make it ineffective both from a financial and from an environmental perspective.

It's not impossible, it's just impossible now.

I think I saw a doc about a small new farm built there very recently that is testing to get over those issues.
IIRC it was a reflecter farm with a central collection tower rather than panels. The main issue was that the odd bird that flew near to the collector tower, in the path of the reflected sunlight was getting to about 10,000 degrees in under a second.

I think it was there. Saw the doc at the beginning of the year.

ICBM

digitalscream said:

fretmeister said:

9: Solar could genuinely power the entire planet without the need for any other power supply. At the moment the issue is not the generation, it is the storage and transport of that power. A large farm in the Sahara could generate enough for the world - if the desert was covered completely in the panels. But at the moment there is no way to efficiently transport that power all across the globe.

This one's often brought up - on the surface it's a good idea, but as I recall the major problem with a Saharan solar farm isn't actually the transportation/transmission of that power, but rather that the surface conditions it would create within the farm (mainly concentrated heat not absorbed by the panels) would make it impossible for humans to survive even with protection, and even machines capable of the fine movements required for farm maintenance would struggle. The tech to do so doesn't exist at this point (within an effective budget), so that's the main impediment. Not to mention that the raw materials and energy required for manufacturing on that scale would likely make it ineffective both from a financial and from an environmental perspective.

It's not impossible, it's just impossible now.

It would also be a daft idea, since it's much more efficient to spread the generation capacity evenly over the Earth - or more accurately evenly with regard to population centres - so that the transmission losses are minimised.

It's only useful to illustrate the relative scale of the area needed - much like saying that you could actually fit the entire human population of the world on the Isle Of Wight if we all stood shoulder to shoulder.

What really frustrates me is this...

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/aug/01/fossil-fuel-subsidy-cash-pay-green-energy-transition

You don't need to put 'Planet Before Profit' - you can have both, there are vast profits to be made by investing in clean energy, and it's incredibly short-sighted and perverse that governments and the large oil corporations aren't doing so now that renewables are reaching the tipping point where they're actually cheaper than fossil fuels.